Sunday, July 13: Chamber Orchestra with conductor Larry Rachleff and soprano Susan Lorette Dunn, 7:30 p.m. Talk under the Tent with Deborah Schmit-Lobis, pianist: "What does the Oboe have to do with it?" 6:30 p.m.

Among the parade of guest conductors at the Colorado Music Festival this season, only Larry Rachleff has previously stood atop the Chautauqua Auditorium podium. In 2008, he directed a program for the large festival orchestra while music director Michael Christie was away. Rachleff returns Sunday, July 13, to open the festival's third week with a more intimate chamber music program.

Rachleff, who is not a candidate in the CMF's music director search, is music director of the Rhode Island Philharmonic and director of orchestras at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music in Houston. On tonight's program, he will be joined by his wife, Australian soprano Susan Lorette Dunn.

She will sing a selection from Joseph Canteloube's huge collection "Chants d'Auvergne." The 30 songs, grouped in five sets, are orchestrated arrangements of folk songs from the Auvergne region of southern France, sung in the local dialect of the Occitan language. Collecting these melodies and texts was Canteloube's major life's work. The accompaniments are his original contribution.

Rachleff told the Camera the songs are "perfect summer festival pieces," citing their light but active and coloristic orchestration.

"They are all pastoral in quality and intent, and some have dance elements," Rachleff said.

Dunn will perform six songs compiled from the five sets, including the most famous, the "Bailèro."

Larry Rachleff will lead the Colorado Music Festival for the first time since 2008. (Courtesy photo)

Rachleff said the songs are one way the endangered Occitan language can be preserved, noting that it is not a dialect of standard French. While he and Dunn often collaborate on programs, he said she has made these songs her signature pieces.

Preceding the Canteloube set will be Maurice Ravel's suite "Le Tombeau de Couperin." Ravel has been heavily featured in the CMF's opening weeks. The suite, like other of Ravel's orchestral showpieces, is an orchestration of pieces originally written for piano, a tribute to the French baroque keyboard composer Francois Couperin.

"It's a great virtuoso piece for a small orchestra and a nice companion to the Auvergne songs," Rachleff said.

The program closes with Beethoven's ever-popular Fifth Symphony, which Rachleff said he was excited to perform with a smaller chamber.

"Beethoven's symphonies were not originally intended for the large groups that usually perform them today," Rachleff said. He noted that despite its popularity, the Fifth remains an enormously difficult piece that is not performed as often as might be assumed and ranks behind other Beethoven symphonies such as the Seventh in performance frequency.

Thursday and Friday, the second candidate for the music director position, Mexico's Carlos Miguel Prieto, will conduct the large festival orchestra. Prieto also will direct a chamber orchestra concert to begin Week 4 on July 20. He is music director of the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico, as well as the Louisiana Philharmonic in New Orleans.

Prieto said the festival's commitment to difficult and interesting repertoire is what interests him about the position. He also said that he has loved Colorado for some time and skis here every year.

"It's one of my favorite American states," he told the Camera.

The CMF's excellent orchestra and its ability to put together incredibly difficult programs is reflected in Prieto's Thursday/Friday program, which consists entirely of ballet music, including two complete ballet scores.

"I've always been obsessed with (Russian ballet impresario) Sergei Diaghilev," Prieto said. "I love what he accomplished for music at the beginning of the 20th century through a comprehensive art form that encompassed the greatest talent of his time."

The CMF program pairs Igor Stravinsky's "Petrouchka," in its original 1911 form (rather than the 1947 revision), with another ballet commissioned by Diaghilev, "The Three-Cornered Hat" by Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, whose original sets were designed by Pablo Picasso.

Prieto said Falla is a composer dear to his heart.

"He was actually acquainted with two of my grandparents, and I've always felt close to him," Prieto said, adding he was in many ways the Spanish equivalent of Debussy. He also said he always has wanted to pair "Petrouchka" with "The Three-Cornered Hat."

"They really are parallel stories, each about a girl pursued by two different male figures, one powerful, but with an ugly personality, and the other good but not powerful," Prieto said

He said the CMF is the first organization to which he has pitched the pairing that has not dismissed it as a crazy idea.

"They are both incredibly challenging scores," he said. "The Three-Cornered Hat" has a large part for solo mezzo-soprano, which will be sung by new University of Colorado faculty member Abigail Nims, who has become a Boulder favorite. Nims recently sang Bach's "St. John Passion" with Prieto in Mexico City.

The concert opens with the suite from the ballet "Estancia" by Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera.

"It's a short suite, and I wanted to include something from the greatest Latin American ballet score," Prieto said.

Week 3 also brings the second CMF "Mash-Up" concert, which again is conducted by Steve Hackman, who is curating the entire three-concert series. The Tuesday program, titled "Grace, Glamour, and Grit," features three female singers who Hackman said embody those ideals. Aiofe O'Donovan, Olga Bell, and Shara Worden, whose stage name is My Brightest Diamond, will perform their original songs in orchestral arrangements, most by Hackman himself, along with a Kate Bush cover for all three women.

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